I'm seeing some people here saying that older editions was better and I disagree with that. The prose and game design have always been mediocre.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 18, 2022, 01:52:56 PM
I'm seeing some people here saying that older editions was better and I disagree with that. The prose and game design have always been mediocre.

90% of TTRPG prose and mechanics are trash... mediocre is an A grade in this medium.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on April 18, 2022, 09:35:03 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 18, 2022, 05:39:53 AM
Especially the LARPers.

I never LARPed thank god. The concept always felt a little bit too creepy for me.

But whatever floats your boat...

I playtested the early version way back. Two of my local players used to host the local VtES LARP and it was pretty baseline really. Mostly interaction and intrigue focused far as I recall. Its the perfect LARP for a more casual play and doesnt usually need the props that other LARPs tend to need. Cthulhu Live was another that could pull this off. But the real fun was the ones with props and monsters.

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 18, 2022, 02:22:55 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 18, 2022, 01:52:56 PM
I'm seeing some people here saying that older editions was better and I disagree with that. The prose and game design have always been mediocre.

90% of TTRPG prose and mechanics are trash... mediocre is an A grade in this medium.

It was the obnoxious short stories I always hated... I bought an RPG book not the musings of a frustrated writer wannabe.

Quote from: Omega on April 18, 2022, 02:24:51 PM
Cthulhu Live was another that could pull this off. But the real fun was the ones with props and monsters.

I'm not a very good actor and would lack the inhibition to act out in front of other people. I'm fine if there's a table in front of me though. It's my shield.

Late to the discussion as always, as an adult looking back, my friends who are far more left leaning now as adults were interested in Vampire when we were younger, and my friends who weren't into Vampire aren't left leaning now.    But this is a sample size of one group of people.  I can say that white wolf never interested me.

   The whole vampires as beautiful heroes has never appealed to me.  I think of the Frog Brother's description of them in my head all the time, "Evil Shit sucking monsters", when books, games, or movies come out with that narrative.   Maybe the idea of them being heroes was always more appealing to people who lean more left?  I do not know, and I know I have no issue with the idea of a noble monster, it just always seemed like a vampire is just a parasite, and to survive must kill humans.  It seems a noble vampire would suicide themselves, if they were noble in the sense I understand it. 

  I remember paging through books in the early 90's but the material did not interest me, as much because of the game system as the implied protagonists.

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 03:02:53 PM
was always more appealing to people who lean more left?

Nah... We hated the idea of playing a nambi pampi Edwards. We always played Sabbat and loved kicking the shit out of the Camerilla.

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 03:02:53 PM
   The whole vampires as beautiful heroes has never appealed to me.  I think of the Frog Brother's description of them in my head all the time, "Evil Shit sucking monsters", when books, games, or movies come out with that narrative.   Maybe the idea of them being heroes was always more appealing to people who lean more left?  I do not know, and I know I have no issue with the idea of a noble monster, it just always seemed like a vampire is just a parasite, and to survive must kill humans.  It seems a noble vampire would suicide themselves, if they were noble in the sense I understand it. 

  I remember paging through books in the early 90's but the material did not interest me, as much because of the game system as the implied protagonists.

I only got interested in the Vampire end of the pool after Revised added Dhampirs to the mix; they don't need to consume blood and had ghoul-like access to disciplines. V20 also gave them the defining trait of being stupid resilient to aggravated damage that made them bar none my favorite character type for that section of the World of Darkness; particularly once you throw in a couple of anti-vampire merits that make them even more in line with the folklore of dhampirs as vampire hunters (i.e. base of stupid resilient + can sense vampires, see through their illusions, deal aggravated damage to supernaturals and their blood is toxic to vampires).

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 03:02:53 PM
   The whole vampires as beautiful heroes has never appealed to me.  I think of the Frog Brother's description of them in my head all the time, "Evil Shit sucking monsters", when books, games, or movies come out with that narrative.   Maybe the idea of them being heroes was always more appealing to people who lean more left?  I do not know, and I know I have no issue with the idea of a noble monster, it just always seemed like a vampire is just a parasite, and to survive must kill humans.  It seems a noble vampire would suicide themselves, if they were noble in the sense I understand it. 

  I remember paging through books in the early 90's but the material did not interest me, as much because of the game system as the implied protagonists.

I think the vampire is interesting because it has versatility as a storytelling tool, but in general I agree that they're too often romanticized to the point of losing the monstrosity that defines them. Yeah, straight up superheroes isn't appropriate for vampires. But dark superheroes? Tortured antiheroes? That's the best they get IMO. One of the settings I'm working on is a dark superheroes setting where most of the monsters are evil, while a minority are broody antiheroic romance novel cover models that fight the bad guys.

Other times the games attract weirdos who get off on twisted power fantasies of murderous psychopaths. In D&D terms, these are players who go out of their way to murder innocent baby goblins and revel in doing so.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on April 18, 2022, 02:32:24 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 18, 2022, 02:22:55 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 18, 2022, 01:52:56 PM
I'm seeing some people here saying that older editions was better and I disagree with that. The prose and game design have always been mediocre.

90% of TTRPG prose and mechanics are trash... mediocre is an A grade in this medium.

It was the obnoxious short stories I always hated... I bought an RPG book not the musings of a frustrated writer wannabe.

Yeah, I was never particularly interested in the short fiction. The Chronicles books I recall were chock full of short fiction that didn't even relate to the rules contents of the book, like circuses of deformed demon clowns and babies born covered in tiny eggs that were never explained or referenced again.

But even as RPG books they're not very good. Everlasting and WitchCraft had better rules than even Chronicles. Mostly because they used universal rules for magic and superpowers rather than the numerous redundant and power creeping subsystems used by WoD/CoD.

It took until Ken Hite writing V5 before vampires could have multiple powers per level in their arbitrary hierarchical superpower mechanic. Even VtR2 couldn't manage that much. Even then, the amalgam powers are often iffy: several are even more nonsensical in placement than the filler devotions in VtR1, ostensibly to restrict them to certain classes. Everlasting's system for designing powers is superior (without going off on a tangent it's basically how gifts work in Godbound but with granular experience costs).

My impression is that yes they were.  Or at least proto-woke, meaning woke views but lacking the power to impose their views on others.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on April 18, 2022, 03:17:56 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 03:02:53 PM
was always more appealing to people who lean more left?

Nah... We hated the idea of playing a nambi pampi Edwards. We always played Sabbat and loved kicking the shit out of the Camerilla.

  But...you said you are left leaning.  I am not implying the weird Glow in the Sun vamps for teen girls when I spoke about vampires.   I mean the death dealing monsters. 

  I also mean with appeal to left, in the sense that the OP was asking if it was always woke.  I assumed Vampire had a following more or less built in thanks to Anne Rice (and her fiction never appealed to me at all) where vampires are presented in a more anti-hero/sympathetic light.  I do remember most of the people who were more drawn to that sort of fiction were my more left leaning friends (though left back then is almost far right now), but I dunno.   The Frog Brothers, Barlow, and Jerry Dandridge as movie characters had already ruined that perspective for me as a kid.

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 04:04:31 PM
  I also mean with appeal to left, in the sense that the OP was asking if it was always woke.  I assumed Vampire had a following more or less built in thanks to Anne Rice (and her fiction never appealed to me at all) where vampires are presented in a more anti-hero/sympathetic light.  I do remember most of the people who were more drawn to that sort of fiction were my more left leaning friends (though left back then is almost far right now), but I dunno.   The Frog Brothers, Barlow, and Jerry Dandridge as movie characters had already ruined that perspective for me as a kid.

Mark Rein-Hagen made his game more or less as a pastiche of vampire fiction at the time. There's lots of influence from Anne Rice, but there's also influences from other works. Some of the character classes (they're basically character classes, even if its a skill-based system) are blatant copies of very specific works of vampire fiction, such as punk counterculture vampires from The Lost Boys, body horror vampires from Necroscope, vampires that look identical to Graf Orlock from Nosferatu, sexy vampires with telepathy like Lestat from Anne Rice's books, snake-like vampires that worship a snake god like in the b-movie The Lair of the White Worm, or even a non-vampire like the three-eyed protagonist from the anime Sazan Eyes. Sometimes this goes beyond inspiration and straight into uninspired rip-off, and some of it is weird arbitrary stuff that you wouldn't ordinarily associated with vampires. Beyond that already listed we get stuff like Hollywood Satanists, Italian mafia incest aristocrat necromancer vampires, the historical assassins as vampires, some Ars Magica characters as vampires, the rough likeness of Baron Samedi, sirens, fairies, time travelers...

Honestly, I think Nightlife did this stuff better. Mark Rein-Hagen hamstrings his classes by forcing all vampires to follow rules like "allergic to sunlight, drinks bloods" whereas the kin in Nightlife were free to vary in diets and weaknesses to a great extent. I don't remember if they had sirens, but they did have gorgons that fed by turning victims to stone and one class that blatantly copies the inuat monster from Nomads.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 18, 2022, 04:30:00 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on April 18, 2022, 04:04:31 PM
  I also mean with appeal to left, in the sense that the OP was asking if it was always woke.  I assumed Vampire had a following more or less built in thanks to Anne Rice (and her fiction never appealed to me at all) where vampires are presented in a more anti-hero/sympathetic light.  I do remember most of the people who were more drawn to that sort of fiction were my more left leaning friends (though left back then is almost far right now), but I dunno.   The Frog Brothers, Barlow, and Jerry Dandridge as movie characters had already ruined that perspective for me as a kid.

Mark Rein-Hagen made his game more or less as a pastiche of vampire fiction at the time. There's lots of influence from Anne Rice, but there's also influences from other works. Some of the character classes (they're basically character classes, even if its a skill-based system) are blatant copies of very specific works of vampire fiction, such as punk counterculture vampires from The Lost Boys, body horror vampires from Necroscope, vampires that look identical to Graf Orlock from Nosferatu, sexy vampires with telepathy like Lestat from Anne Rice's books, snake-like vampires that worship a snake god like in the b-movie The Lair of the White Worm, or even a non-vampire like the three-eyed protagonist from the anime Sazan Eyes. Sometimes this goes beyond inspiration and straight into uninspired rip-off, and some of it is weird arbitrary stuff that you wouldn't ordinarily associated with vampires. Beyond that already listed we get stuff like Hollywood Satanists, Italian mafia incest aristocrat necromancer vampires, the historical assassins as vampires, some Ars Magica characters as vampires, the rough likeness of Baron Samedi, sirens, fairies, time travelers...

Honestly, I think Nightlife did this stuff better. Mark Rein-Hagen hamstrings his classes by forcing all vampires to follow rules like "allergic to sunlight, drinks bloods" whereas the kin in Nightlife were free to vary in diets and weaknesses to a great extent. I don't remember if they had sirens, but they did have gorgons that fed by turning victims to stone and one class that blatantly copies the inuat monster from Nomads.

  Interesting.   I just remember that time period being a rise in popularity for Rice's books.   It makes sense the authors would use every tool they could find for the vampires.  I have no familiarity with white wolf past paging through a Vampire the Masquerade book in the early-mid 90's.  How much of the movie Underworld is lifted from those games?  I remember seeing that movie wondering if anyone is getting sued.